The incoming changes to the way taxpayers provide information regarding income to HMRC through online systems, part of the Making Tax Digital initiative, has raised questions as to what to do if data provided is incorrect and amendments need to be made later.
HMRC can currently auto-correct obvious mistakes or omissions within 9 months of a tax return being submitted. Taxpayers are given up to 12 months from the statutory filing date or extended filing date if they were given late notification of needing to submit a tax return.
A new consultation launched by the Taxman has set out to get answers to shape the way a new amendments procedure would work.
There are variations to the way amendments can currently be submitted for Income Tax, Corporation Tax and VAT returns. VAT mistakes are generally amended on the next return submitted, whereas the others have an online or paper filing procedure at the moment.
HMRC is seeking a way to unify the procedure for all taxes into a single online point for amendments.
The consultation is running until early February next year (2019) and aims to collect data on why amendments are made, the complications people experience, differences in ease of use of current procedures and thoughts on having a single online unified amendments process.